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Syrian activists help 2 wounded Western journalists escape from Syria

BEIRUT — Two wounded Western journalists escaped from Syria Tuesday after being trapped for days in the besieged central city of Homs, activist groups said. Thirteen Syrian activists who were helping smuggle out at least one of the reporters were killed in the operation, one of the groups said.

The global activist group Avaaz said it helped smuggle British photographer Paul Conroy across the border into neighboring Lebanon. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said French journalist Edith Bouvier had also been evacuated, but it was not immediately clear how she got out and where she was taken.

“I’m glad that this nightmare is over,” Sarkozy said.

The two were injured last week in a government rocket attack on the rebel-controlled neighborhood of Baba Amr in central Homs. Two other Western journalists — American Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the same attack. Their bodies and two other uninjured foreign reporters — Frenchman William Daniels and Spaniard Javier Espinosa — may still be in Homs.

Their harrowing ordeal shined a light on the horrors of life under siege in Homs, a stronghold for government opponents waging an uprising against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian rule. Hundreds have been killed in more than three weeks of relentless shelling of the city, many of them dying when they ventured out to forage for food as a humanitarian crisis grew more dire by the day.

A top U.N. official released a new death toll for the 11-month-old uprising, saying well over 7,500 people have been killed and the conflict looked increasingly like civil war. Activist groups said Monday that the death toll had surpassed 8,000.

Just days after Western and Arab nations met in Tunisia to forge a strategy on how to push Assad from power, Tunisia’s president said Tuesday he was ready to offer asylum to the Syrian leader as part of a negotiated solution to the conflict. However the chances of Assad accepting such an offer are close to nil.

The U.N. human rights chief said the situation in Syria has deteriorated rapidly in recent weeks and demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.

U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said her office has received reports that Syrian military and security forces “have launched massive campaigns of arrest” and launched an onslaught against government opponents that has deprived many civilians of food, water and medical supplies. Pillay told an urgent meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council that “hundreds of people have reportedly been killed since the start of this latest assault in the beginning of February 2012.”

She called on Syria to end all fighting, allow international monitors to enter the country and give unhindered access to aid agencies.

Despite international pressure that mounts every day, the regime kept up its fierce bombardment of the central region. Activists reported overnight the deaths of 144 more people in unrest across the country — scores of them in Baba Amr by security forces as they tried to flee. They said at least nine more were killed by shelling on Tuesday.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said shelling of the central town of Halfaya killed at least four civilians and wounded dozens, many of them seriously. The Syrian opposition group Local Coordination Committees said 20 people were killed and 100 wounded in the town. It put the day nationwide death toll so far at 64.

Both groups said Baba Amr was under intense shelling. The LCC said 24 people were killed in Homs.

The LCC and global activist group Avaaz said Conroy was smuggled over the border to Lebanon. Rima Fleihan, an LCC spokeswoman, said the Sunday Times photographer was smuggled out by Syrian army defectors.

Avaaz, which said it organized the evacuation with local Syrian activists, said 35 Syrians volunteered to help get the journalists out and bring aid in. Of those, 13 were killed. Avaaz said three were killed in government shelling while trying to help Conroy through the neighborhood and 10 others were killed trying to bring in aid while Conroy was on his way out on Sunday evening.

It said the remaining foreign journalists who had been stuck in the area with Conroy “remain unaccounted for.”

The LCC said other Western journalists are negotiating with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to be allowed to leave Syria without having their videos and photos confiscated by authorities.

All the journalists killed and wounded in Homs were smuggled into Syria from Lebanon illegally.

“I have spoken to Paul this morning and he sounded in good spirits,” Conroy’s wife Kate Conroy said in a statement Monday. “The family are overjoyed and relieved that he is safe and look forward to getting him home.”

She told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that she wouldn’t comment further on her husband’s escape for fear of jeopardizing the safety of those still attempting to leave.

Conroy is 47 and a father of three.

Activists posted videos of Conroy and Bouvier last week, pleading for help getting out.

The French reporter Daniels was last seen in an amateur video posted by activists last week, standing next to Bouvier, who was lying on a couch. He appeared uninjured. Bouvier works for Le Figaro.

Espinosa, who works for El Mundo,has been occasionally tweeting. His last tweet, sent Sunday, linked to a photo he said was from the Baba Amr neighborhood of blood pooled in a gutter.

Also believed to still be in Baba Amr are the bodies of Colvin and Ochlik, who were killed in the same attack that wounded Bouvier and Conroy.

Avaaz said in the statement announcing Conroy’s evacuation that the other journalists “remain unaccounted for.”

Spain’s Foreign Ministry said it is trying to help to evacuate Espinosa. The newspaper said it does not know if he is injured and last spoke to him Monday.

In Beirut, a British embassy official told The AP that London is working to repatriate Conroy.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague said Conroy was “safely in Lebanon, where he is receiving full consular assistance.”

In a message on his Twitter account, Britain’s ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, said embassy staff were looking after Conroy who was “doing well.” In a statement, The Sunday Times said he was “in good shape and good spirits.”

Fletcher said that Conroy’s experience was “a chilling testimony to what families in Homs (are) experiencing.”